Second Chances
by PinkRangerV
Summary: To the complete and utter surprise of absolutely nobody, it started with Conner. An AU on what could have happened to free Trent from the White Dino Gem. Takes place after Leader of the Whack. Oneshot.


A\N: So this is what happens when my plot bunnies take drugs. This is not actually connected to my TOPRoE 'verse (...I think...), it's just a totally random oneshot. Set just after ep. 14.

* * *

Trent had been hiking for a while now, long enough to get good and lost. That had been his plan; while he couldn't _outrun_ the White Dino Ranger, he could sure as hell confuse him. So, other than noticing the occasional pretty vista or bird, he really didn't pay attention to his surroundings, and by bedtime he was congratulating himself on a job well done. He went to sleep happy.

...And then sat up five minutes later at the strange rustling noises.

Was it a bear? Trent had never heard of bears this far out! He'd left his food right out in the open! And he was sitting in a nice, small tent. He might as well have a 'human burrito, please eat me' sign on the tent door. _Please go for the food I didn't put away, please go for the food I didn't put away,_ Trent prayed silently.

There was a metallic crash. Trent's lantern fell to the ground.

"_Ethan_!" Two voices hissed. It sounded like...Conner and Kira?

"Sorry!" Ethan hissed back.

Trent blinked, then unzipped his tent, trying to climb out and promptly getting caught on it. (Note to self: Find whoever made tent doors and let the White Dino Ranger out on them, this was ridiculous.) The noise caught the attention of the three Rangers, who were dressed like robbers in a bad movie.

Trent sighed. "Guys, what are you doing?" He asked as reasonably as possible, trying to disentangle himself from the tent door. (Seriously. This was pathetic.) "I told you, it's not-"

"GET HIM!"

Trent didn't even have time to scream before the other Rangers did exactly as ordered.

*PR*PR*PR*

To the complete and utter surprise of absolutely no one, it started with Conner. More specifically, it started with Conner, secret menus, and Ethan and Kira egging him on.

They had just gotten out of three exams in a row. That wasn't really normal in Reefside High School, but Principal Randall had managed to engineer several minor breakdowns in faculty communication, so maybe it could be more properly attributed as her fault in the first place. Since the first exam had been science, Dr. Oliver had switched his with a pop quiz and gave them the rest of the class period off. His pop quizzes were pretty short, so the three Rangers had ducked out and gone to Starbucks, where Ethan, being Ethan, had ordered something insanely complicated off the secret menu.

Conner had goggled and demanded to know how Ethan had done that.

After school Conner had decided that three exams in a row deserved a treat: Going and discovering the one secret menu item guaranteed to give everyone a sugar high. He'd originally had a ridiculously complicated plan that probably wouldn't have worked, but Ethan, thinking it would be utterly hilarious to watch Conner on a sugar high, had gone ahead and Googled. And then stupidly made a comment about how he and Trent had discovered a weird shake at...

Kira had looked ready to burst into tears.

Conner, despite his utter idiocy, loved Kira like a brother, and damnit, Trent was making his honorary sister cry. Normally, the only option would involve shotguns, but Conner was also well aware that a) it _technically_ wasn't Trent's fault and b) Kira apparently liked the guy. Ethan, at the same time, was having roughly the same thoughts, although more along the lines of 'hmm, I could potentially track Trent's GPS to show Kira he's okay...'

"Ethan, find Trent. Kira, start making phone calls, we're pulling an all-nighter." Conner ordered, jerking off the highway determinedly.

"...Um. To do _what_?" Kira asked suspiciously.

"We're gonna kidnap Trent and save him."

Ordinarily, Kira would have at this point asked if the boys were insane. Unfortunately, a side effect of the Dino Gems was that they all were telepathically linked to a certain degree. When you added in that she'd had many fantasies over the past week of doing exactly that, it was probably natural that a lust for battle jumped into her eyes and she started dialing.

It took them a while to find Trent. The guy was like a ninja. Conner made a mental note about using that in battle at one stage. When they finally caught up with him, however, they realized they'd forgotten something, namely a plan.

"GET HIM!"

Well, it was a start.

*PR*PR*PR*

Trent was in a trunk.

Conner's trunk, to be specific. Tied up, gagged, and with a pillow Ethan had stuck under his head with an apologetic smile before slamming the trunk shut. It actually wasn't the most uncomfortable ride Trent had ever had, since Conner kept his gym bag in the trunk and once Trent's sense of smell gave up and died from whatever was in there, it was a decent cushion, but it was definitely the _weirdest_ ride of Trent's life, and that was saying something.

He really ought to just call his dad and get a ride home, but that brought along a lot of dangers. Maybe these guys were goofballs (or on crack, Trent wasn't entirely sure which), but they were Power Rangers and could handle the White Dino Ranger. His dad couldn't.

Trent was just trying to ignore the temptation of digging around for Conner's cell phone when the car stopped.

Trent froze.

There was a pause, then an argument. Trent couldn't make out the words, but there was a general sense of bickering. Then the trunk was opened, and a hand was slapped over Trent's eyes. Trent's yelp was muffled by the gag.

"Sorry, White Ranger, but we can't let you see our secret base." Ethan said, his voice cartoonishly deepened. Oh, lord, they had gone insane. "Guys!" Ethan hissed. "Blindfold!"

"Sorry!" Conner hissed back. Ethan's hand moved, and there was an image of a streetlight blinding Trent before Ethan slipped a red headband over Trent's eyes. Then hands dragged Trent out of the trunk, set him on his feet, and dragged him off, all while hissing various tidbits at each other like Kira's "_Careful_, guys!" or Conner's "Shh! Don't wake anyone up!"

They went inside somewhere, judging from the sound of feet on vinyl. Then they went into what felt like a closet, and then on...stone, maybe? Lava stone. Trent had heard there was a network of lava tunnels under Reefside. Had they broken into some? That'd actually be pretty cool, like a Ranger clubhouse...

Trent clamped down on the image of himself running in and out of the cave with the others, going out to fight monsters and playing video games and generally having a blast. That wasn't safe. He knew it. He couldn't put them in danger like that.

There was a sliding sound, then Conner...said? Thought?...at Ethan to get a chair. Trent tried to say he could hear them, but it was actually fairly hard to talk around a gag. There was a scraping sound, then Trent was plonked unceremoniously into a chair while someone tied him to it. Trent was torn between the urge to make a _lot_ of jokes and the urge to completely freak out. He wasn't sure which one was winning.

Ethan whipped the headband off. Trent blinked, then squinted. Someone was shining a light in his face.

"Okay, White Ranger." Conner said, his voice as badly-altered as Ethan's. "It's time to talk."

"Well, I'd love to, but I have a gag on," Trent tried to say, but it came out a bit scrambled.

There was a pause and some hissing. Trent could _almost_ follow the conversation now. Strange, it was like some kind of sixth sense...

_Home._

Trent yanked away from it like he'd been burned.

There was a pause, then Yellow, the sense of Kira, reached out. So did Red, Conner's childishly-curious mind.

"Um. Dude." Conner asked, not even bothering to disguise his voice. "Did you just _think_ at us?"

"Uhmph. Yeh." Trent managed.

"See! I told you!" Kira hissed.

"Told me what?" Conner hissed back.

"He's good! He's one of us!"

Conner sighed. Then he 'disguised' his voice again. "Okay, White Ranger. You have one chance. Tell us how to un-turn you evil!"

Trent was fairly sure that sentence didn't even make sense. "Uhm. I duhno?" He was getting better at talking around the gag, though. "Can you ghuys get this offa me?"

Ethan hissed a swearword, 'snuck' up behind Trent, and untied the gag. Trent spat it out gladly. "Thanks." Now to work on getting them to let him out of the chair so he could run like hell.

"Okay. Now you can talk. Tell us how to bring you back to the side of Good!" Conner pronounced dramatically.

Trent sighed. "Conner, if I knew, do you _really_ think I'd run off and live in the woods? There's, like, _bears_ out there. It's kinda freaky."

There was a pause.

"Wait, you really don't know?" Conner asked, peeking out from behind the light.

"_No_." Trent tried not to tack 'you idiot' on the end, but he was fairly sure the others heard it anyway. He definitely heard Conner's "Ow!" as Kira smacked him upside the head.

Kira ran out to Trent, starting to untie him. "I'm sorry, damn, these two are idiots, I should never have-" Kira froze.

Trent didn't understand why until he felt it too. The coldness. Like ice taking over his heart.

The White Dino Ranger wanted to play.

*PR*PR*PR*

The White Dino Ranger laughed.

Just...laughed. The other Rangers stepped back, even Kira. The White Dino Ranger felt his morph shimmer over him, felt Trent screaming...

It was time to kill.

There was a roar of Power as the White Dino Ranger snapped the bonds holding him to the chair, and the chair itself. The other Rangers scrambled to defensive positions, grabbing anything nearby to throw or whack him with, and he walked through them. He was power! He was strength! He was-

Landing on the floor because he had, while instinctively not stepping on a rodent, been bashed in the skull by Conner with a lamp.

The White Dino Ranger blinked, but all three Rangers had just actually leaped on top of him in a football tackle to be proud of. He roared and fought, but the other three were surprisingly effective wrestlers. Plus, Conner, on the principle of 'see bad thing, smash bad thing, problem solved', was trying to pulverize his wrist. That wasn't helping.

"Quit hitting my wrist, you idiot!" The White Dino Ranger finally roared.

"I'm smashing the evil Gem!" Conner shouted defiantly.

"It's a _diamond_, you idiot!" The White Ranger shouted back. "How the hell are you going to smash the _hardest substance that exists_?"

"...Oh."

The White Ranger should not have been surprised that the next target of the lamp-wielding lunatic was his skull. Again.

"_Stop hitting me, you idiot_!" He roared again.

"Conner!" Kira shouted, yanking the lamp away.

"Kira, what are you doing?" Conner's hundred-fifty pounds squirmed uncomfortably on the small of Trent's back.

"We want to _save_ him, not give him a concussion!"

"I probably already _have_ one." The White Ranger growled irritably. "Would you idiots _get the hell off me_?" Was this what it was like to have siblings? The White Ranger was going to go to every place of worship known to man and give thanks on bended knee that he didn't have any.

"Yes you do, you have us." Ethan snapped, having apparently heard that thought.

...What.

Kira cut off the freakout that the White Ranger nearly had. "Yeah. We hear thoughts. Because you're our sibling, kind of, and as long as you have the Dino Gem we can..." The White Ranger could almost see the glee on her face.

"We can link to him!" Ethan finished, sounding like he'd just discovered a secret boss on Space Ninjas. (For a gamer, Ethan was surprisingly hipster about it. He liked the weirdest things.)

"Um, wait a minute, do you even know what you're-" The White Ranger started when Red, Yellow, and Blue reached out.

...And White reached back.

Black was there, fast asleep, but Red, Yellow, and Blue were enough, and when White's mind touched theirs it was like being sucked in by a whirlwind, one that tore open his heart and read his innermost secrets, then promptly discarded them in favor of the idea that Trent was their brother and they loved him. Weirdly, definitely not in a sibling way in Kira's case and definitely in an annoying-little-brother way in Conner and Ethan's, but Trent was White and when they reached out, they reached into the double life he'd led forever, the double life the half-experimented on Gem had picked up on and made all too real, the life where Trent was caught between the perfect son his father wanted, a man who could exploit a banana republic or tear down a home to make a profit, and the half-grown man he was, artist and friend and flawed and somehow purely _him_, and somehow...

Somehow they made it okay.

The Gem wasn't so much encoded with evil as it was designed to amplify the inherent nature of its bearer. For Mesegog, that would have been pure evil. For Trent, it had been duality.

But without duality, there was just him. Trent. An artist, a friend, a lover someday, a son now, a wealth of unexplored things hidden in a calm, easygoing personality.

And the Gem accepted that.

Trent opened his eyes. He was demorphed, and his siblings were still sitting on him. And Dr. O, morphed into the Black Ranger, had turned on the lights.

"What on _Earth_ are you guys _doing_?"

They looked at each other.

"...Good question," Conner said, "But I think it really needs milkshakes."


End file.
